


Falling Over

by bloodandcream



Series: Ship all the Ships [37]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cain lives in a church and has a garden, Drinking, M/M, idfk what happened here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 17:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3818242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodandcream/pseuds/bloodandcream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s three a.m. and he’s drunk as heck and he’s in a church crying a little bit with his face tilted up towards a stained glass window the moon light has lit up. It’s maybe a little embarrassing - ok a lot embarrassing - when someone finds him like that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Over

Chuck doesn’t really know how he ends up there. He may have had a little too much to drink. Although he knows by now how much of a bottle of whiskey he can drink, and how much of rum, and how much of tequila, they still manage to surprise him when he mixes them a little too much. But dwindling bottle levels forced his hand. He maybe got a little too drunk and decided to wander. Sometimes when he’s finally shut down his mind and he feels pretty good from the alcohol, he just wants to go somewhere, he wants to participate in life and not just stay cooped up in his house.

Unfortunately by then it’s usually late at night - try three a.m, - and nothing is open and no one is around. So he wanders. He goes out in the balmy warm summer air and scrapes his feet along the dirty concrete and he finds himself standing in front of a church. He recognizes it. He’s passed it often enough and never gone inside, because let’s be honest, he’s given up on God a hell of a long time ago. But it’s there, and a light is on over the front door and when he tugs on it, the door opens.

It’s three a.m. and he’s drunk as heck and he’s in a church crying a little bit with his face tilted up towards a stained glass window the moon light has lit up. It’s maybe a little embarrassing - ok a lot embarrassing - when someone finds him like that.

“Can I help you?”

Chuck stumbles a little and looks over to the guy who’s wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt, his beard long and his hair graying, and Chuck blinks a few times. Isn’t it too late for anyone to be up?

“I - uh… no?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t really know?”

“It’s three a.m., you must be here for a reason.”

“I’m just. Lost.”

-

It turns out that his name is Cain. And although Chuck thought that he must be a priest or something - who else hangs out at a church at night - he really, really isn’t. He’s friends with one of the priests though, and he lives in one of the spare rooms in the rectory off the church. He volunteers there, cooking for the soup kitchen, helping grow the garden, cleaning the church. Chuck is not sure why any one would live in a church if they aren’t a priest, but he’s kind of a weird guy.

Chuck goes home, still drunk enough to stumble, and he passes out on his couch. He thinks that he should forget it, but he doesn’t. A few days later, drunk at three a.m. he finds himself sitting in a hard wood pew at the church again, and Cain is there again.

It’s not like Chuck has much to show for his life, an old house that’s falling down that his dead parents gave to him some while ago and a failed writing career and useless degrees, he really doesn’t have much to show. But Cain has less to show, and it’s not like it’s a competition or anything really, but Cain is basically homeless and he’s just kind of settled here with an old friend and never left.

Chuck guesses it’s a good thing. That someone is here to help out, to grow the garden out back. But it’s kind of strange that this guy doesn’t even believe in God.

“Like, really, I mean, have you ever believed in Him?”

“I used to.”

“But?”

“But what? Life changes. We grow, we move on.”

“Oh.”

-

Chuck doesn’t really have a lot to do in his life. His writing is stagnating and he knows he needs to stop drinking so much and his house is a mess. He starts volunteering at the church. He goes on Friday when they have a spaghetti night and he passes out food to people worn down and tired and broken because really, there is no God, why would he let his children suffer like this. And Chuck cleans the tables, and he talks to Cain, and he starts to find something in his life that he should be doing that’s not drinking.

-

When fall comes around, Cain asks for help getting the gardens ready for winter. They’re not really very large gardens, a few patches and a few raised beds behind the church, but Chuck still agrees to. He wants to. He wants to do something good, to do something productive, when he’s sober and he can really feel the sun on his skin and the dirt under his hands and it’s good.

Chuck’s met his friend, Castiel, the priest, by now. He’s a nice guy, kind of awkward, and Chuck really almost wants to pry as to where and when and why the two of them became friends. But it is what it is, and Cain never pries in to his past and why he showed up at a church drunk at three a.m. So. You know. It’s fair.

He’s never really worked like this before. He’s worked with his mind and with his thought, when he was sixteen his first job was at a fast food place and that’s kind of like manual labor, but he’s never really worked like this. And Chuck is kind of afraid to say it, it sounds too cheesy for even his own writing, but it’s kind of a spiritual experience. The sense of calm he gets in the garden with Cain. Like he’s where he’s supposed to be. Yeah, no, he shouldn’t believe in those sorts of things anymore.

-

It’s October by now, and it should be colder than it is, but there are absolutely zero clouds in the sky and the sun feels hot against his skin. Chuck has started getting a tan, he’s started getting freckles that he didn’t know he could have. Kneeling in the dirt next to Cain while he’s instructed on what weeds to pull and what to prune and where to mulch, it’s just right. And he isn’t even drunk, he hasn’t even been drunk for weeks.

Cain’s moved closer to him. Slowly. Over the weeks, over the months. Like he’s tested his place and where he fits. There’ve been a few times that Chuck’s showed up in the church at three a.m. and although he doesn’t remember it all they’ve had some interesting discussions about God and the nature of good and evil and destiny.

But this is what he likes best. Sober. In the garden. When Cain’s hands guide him to this plant or that. His steady deep voice instructing, his shirt sleeves rolled up and it’s been a long time since Chuck’s thought about a guy but there’s something about his sun tan skin and his graying beard and his calloused fingers.

Chuck makes the first move. If that’s what you can call falling over. He kind of wanted it to happen, maybe he kind of planned it, but he was kneeling in the dirt and a stone hit up against his knee cap just so wrong and he tipped over in to Cain’s space.

They’re both dirty, and hot, and sweaty, but Chuck could feel him breathing heavy, could feel one of those strong hands against his waist, the two of them laid out between rows of vegetables in the garden behind the church. And it feels better than any drink he’s taken for a long long time. Rough hands pushing up under his shirt, those piercing blue eyes blinking up at him, Cain rolled on to his back and Chuck was awkwardly straddling one of his thighs before getting with it and dipping down to kiss him.

He’s just starting to find his purpose now, just starting to find himself, and now, in the garden where it smells like sage and rosemary and Cain is holding on to him like he’ll run away, Chuck knows.

He hasn’t known what he was supposed to be looking for, he hasn’t known what he was supposed to be finding, but he knows what he wants. Gentle kisses and murmured affectations, hips rocking together, the slow steady build of wanting, this, this right here. He didn’t start with looking for anything in particular, but he knows that he’s found it.


End file.
